Bell Tower

The bell tower of a Buddhist temple—shoro—frames one of Japan's most resonant acoustical and visual experiences: the great bronze bell, struck at dawn and dusk, its sound carrying across the temple precinct and into the surrounding neighborhood. Saito renders the tower in strict geometric terms, the heavy hip roof sitting on its timber frame like a lid, the bell itself a dark volume below. Sound implied through form is precisely the kind of paradox that sustained his decades-long engagement with Buddhist architecture.